Your doctor appointments don’t have to be done in person in the 21st century, and now, neither do your home improvement appointments. On Thursday, October 19, Streem debuted a new mobile product that promises to “radically improve convenience and efficiency for home service professionals and their customers.” Its grand plan involves augmented reality (thanks to Apple’s ARKit) and intelligent video, which will “beam” a service provider directly to the job site (which is to say, your home) no matter where in the world that site may be.
This will allow for home improvement professionals to provide customers with quotes more efficiently than before. Not only will this benefit customers, who no longer have to be at home for a four-hour time window to accommodate a 30-minute visit, but it will also help experts conduct more business during a day. With the Streem app, pros will be equipped with a Digital Toolbox, which is said to make use of advanced computer vision and machine learning to take measurements, find angles, and capture images and video effectively and efficiently. And because a customer can walk a service provider through his or her home with this app, everyone is more prepared when it comes time for the real work to be done.
“Streem is consistently saving pros countless wasted man-hours unnecessarily traveling on-site unprepared and offers pros tools for a whole new level of efficiency and collaboration,” Streem CEO Ryan Fink said in a statement. “For the consumer that means not having to wait days, or sometimes weeks, for a professional to go on-site for an in-person quote or support. We’re bringing home services into the on-demand economy.”
The Streem app claims to be able to recognize logos, product types, model numbers, serial numbers, and dimensions, capturing the data and AR annotations a user makes and saving them as “contextual notes.” These notes can be used as a reference throughout the home improvement process.
“After countless in-depth interviews with home service pros, and learning about their pain points, we saw an opportunity to create an intelligent system that can enhance the communication and collaboration process — while automating the monotonous task of data collection for the pros,” Fink added.
Streem is also partnering with HomeAdvisor to provide customers with a large selection of experienced professionals, streamlining the entire process of remodeling your home.
